I was changing gears on my bike in late 2021 and the chain came off the inner ring and ground into the frame of my bike. It made a huge mess of the carbon:
Taking the bike frame to a carbon specialist and repairing this cost me $1,000. Then, I bought a whole new drive train: chain, rear cassette and front rings - costing a further $500. $1,500 is a massive investment - I justify these big services on the bike by comparing them to train fares - that’s 50 weeks of train trips.
So anyway, it happened again on Friday morning. Exactly the same thing: I changed gears, the chain has come off the inner ring and ground into the frame of my bike. It has made another (admittedley smaller) mess of the carbon in my frame.
So, I took the bike to the shop. They are unwilling to do anything about this situation. ‘Not our fault, our work is good - the gears and chain are obviously working fine and we don’t have this problem with anyone else. It’s your fault’. They best he’s willing to do is give me parts at cost for the repair, once I spend another $1,000ish getting the frame repaired again.
I wasn’t blaming the bike shop, I was blaming the design of the bike. But they don’t think they can bring Trek into this.
I don’t know what to do about this. I really like my bike usually, but spending $3,000 on it over 2 years, only to have a 6-year-old bike at the end of it was never on the cards. I doubt I’d even get $1,500 for it if I tried to sell it. I’d almost be better off giving the bike away as-is and putting that $1,500 toward a new bike. Probably not a Trek this time. I feel like I have the bike equivalant of a write-off.
If you can pickup a frame the same size you should be able to swap the parts over. I snapped my carbon bike in half and have ridden on steel ever since. I managed to transfer most of the parts over. You could take your bike to CERES during one of their workshop sessions and rebuild it if they’ve got a frame a suitable size. I was looking at getting a trek 520 and only heard bad things about the design - seems the crack at the seat pole.
I rode a 1988 Shogun Katana as my daily until 2006. 18 years, and many thousands of kilometers - I honestly don’t know how many as we didn’t have Strava in the 20th century. I loved this bike. I love it more than I have loved any bike I’ve owned since.
But I honestly don’t think I could go back to Steel. I could probably go back to alloy with carbon forks (My 2006 Avanti Vivace). That bike also lasted 10+ years until I got a crack in the frame.
The Avanti died at an inconvenient time (was moving house), and I had to buy another alloy bike on short notice/a tight budget. That was when I got my first Trek (a 1.2). I liked it, but it only lived for 18 months before I was hit by a car on it in 2019.
I got my current Trek second-hand with the insurance payout. I picked up the Madone second-hand, because I could never justify $6k for a bike. Joke’s on me, right? If I spend another $1.5k on it now, I’ll have paid nearly $6 for it anyway.
I was changing gears on my bike in late 2021 and the chain came off the inner ring and ground into the frame of my bike. It made a huge mess of the carbon:
Taking the bike frame to a carbon specialist and repairing this cost me $1,000. Then, I bought a whole new drive train: chain, rear cassette and front rings - costing a further $500. $1,500 is a massive investment - I justify these big services on the bike by comparing them to train fares - that’s 50 weeks of train trips.
So anyway, it happened again on Friday morning. Exactly the same thing: I changed gears, the chain has come off the inner ring and ground into the frame of my bike. It has made another (admittedley smaller) mess of the carbon in my frame.
So, I took the bike to the shop. They are unwilling to do anything about this situation. ‘Not our fault, our work is good - the gears and chain are obviously working fine and we don’t have this problem with anyone else. It’s your fault’. They best he’s willing to do is give me parts at cost for the repair, once I spend another $1,000ish getting the frame repaired again.
I wasn’t blaming the bike shop, I was blaming the design of the bike. But they don’t think they can bring Trek into this.
I don’t know what to do about this. I really like my bike usually, but spending $3,000 on it over 2 years, only to have a 6-year-old bike at the end of it was never on the cards. I doubt I’d even get $1,500 for it if I tried to sell it. I’d almost be better off giving the bike away as-is and putting that $1,500 toward a new bike. Probably not a Trek this time. I feel like I have the bike equivalant of a write-off.
If you can pickup a frame the same size you should be able to swap the parts over. I snapped my carbon bike in half and have ridden on steel ever since. I managed to transfer most of the parts over. You could take your bike to CERES during one of their workshop sessions and rebuild it if they’ve got a frame a suitable size. I was looking at getting a trek 520 and only heard bad things about the design - seems the crack at the seat pole.
I rode a 1988 Shogun Katana as my daily until 2006. 18 years, and many thousands of kilometers - I honestly don’t know how many as we didn’t have Strava in the 20th century. I loved this bike. I love it more than I have loved any bike I’ve owned since.
But I honestly don’t think I could go back to Steel. I could probably go back to alloy with carbon forks (My 2006 Avanti Vivace). That bike also lasted 10+ years until I got a crack in the frame.
The Avanti died at an inconvenient time (was moving house), and I had to buy another alloy bike on short notice/a tight budget. That was when I got my first Trek (a 1.2). I liked it, but it only lived for 18 months before I was hit by a car on it in 2019.
I got my current Trek second-hand with the insurance payout. I picked up the Madone second-hand, because I could never justify $6k for a bike. Joke’s on me, right? If I spend another $1.5k on it now, I’ll have paid nearly $6 for it anyway.
Maybe look into getting a lightweight alloy guard piece fabricated ?
The bike has a stock (plastic) chain guard, but it’s clearly not up to the task.
Has anyone else had the same issue with the same bike?
Yes.